Entire buildings reduced to heap of rubble. A hospital virtually obliterated. Shoes and clothes strewn throughout the debris, their owners nowhere to be found.
After four months of intense fighting, Kurdish Peshmerga forces have liberated the Syrian city from the grip of ISIS.
Their prize: utter devastation.
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“I said I will not leave my city. I will stay here, and told my sons go wherever you want to go,” he said. “But for me, I will stay here, and I will die on the Syrian land.”
Photojournalist Ricardo Garcia Villanova and CNN’s Waffa Munayyer contributed to this report.
